This paper confirms the economic situation as the main determinant in the health self-rating of individuals. There are however two important additional results: The first shows that besides the current situation the former capacity of the household to accumulate wealth - measured by means of an index of assets - have independent effects on the rating of bad or very bad health. Secondly, we found that the economic status was strongly influenced by the educational level. Considering sex and age as co-variables, we developed logistic models to quantify the importance of the socio-economic determinants, including: reside in a rural area; which household member responded to the interview; skin color/race of the individual. Bad or very bad health self-rating is less frequent in rural areas and increases slightly when the respondent is "another resident of the same household". After adjustment of the co-variables (sex and age) and the economic and educational characteristics, we found that skin color/race were not significant as determinants of self-rated bad or very bad health. We also suggest that in future surveys the questions regarding health self-rating should be moved to another position in the questionnaire.
Self-rated health; Socioeconomic determinants; Household Sample Survey PNAD-2003
